Counting Losses

[Richard T Eger]

This discussion is an expansion on that by Vinnie O'Mahony which was initiated as part of a series of discussions around the loss records found in Williamson Murray's book "The Luftwaffe 1933-45: Strategy for Defeat". The earlier discussions are given under coverage of Williamson's book in the "References & Reference Materials" forum. However, at this point, Vinnie's discussion has turned more general and included at least one other book.

Knowing how to assess information which appears in books, even if claimed from official records, is an important topic in Luftwaffe research. Therefore, I have continued this further discussion as a separate topic here.

Regards,
Richard

From 12 O'Clock High!:


Vinnie O
41% of combat losses in last 9 months?
Tue Mar 6 00:18:10 2026


I continue to dig through what I can find on German aircraft losses. The data given in the various sources is defined differently and covers odd time periods, at the authors's
whims.

BUT ...

According to Willaimson Murray, the total number of Luftwaffe combat losses from May, 1940, through June, 1944, is:

23,660

According to John Ellis, the total number of Luftwaffe combat losses from 1 September, 1939, through 31 March, 1945, is:

40,613

Allowing even 500 combat losses for Poland and the invasion or Norway, this would still mean that some

16,500 or so (40.5% of the total 40,613)

aircraft were lost in COMBAT in the last 9 months of the war (ignoring April and May).

Does this make sense? That is, does this sound reasonable?

Or are these two sets of numbers likely to be disconnected?

[This message has been edited by Richard T Eger (edited 06 April 2026).]

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Norbert Neuser
41%...
Tue Mar 6 12:00:55 2026


Hi, Vinnie,

the main problem with counting losses of enemy planes, no matter from which side claimed and seen, is that some propaganda was used to add "some more". So it's hard
to find out anyway, how much losses are to count by only comparing two sources. Even if You check out five ore more, it may be hard to come close to the truth.
Only a personal thinking of mine, which some others may join...
...others probably won't.
A hard nut to crack it seems!

Kind regards

Norbert

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Vinnie O
not claims, from German reports
Tue Mar 6 14:27:55 2026


The losses in both cases are from German sources.

My problems are:

1) is it likely that these 2 authors are using the SAME quartermaster loss records, and so I can simply add Ellis's data to the end of Murray's?

2) isn't it remarkable that the loss rates went up so sharply at this point? (implying an Allied move from mere "air superiority" to "air supremacy")

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Greg Kopchuk
40% losses
Tue Mar 6 15:58:19 2026


Would the majority of those losses have been on the ground? In speaking with a Spitfire pilot I know he said the Luft. would pick their air battles. They (RCAF etc) would go
on rhubars etc and never see a german fighter.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Don Caldwell
No, we're talking air losses only
Tue Mar 6 20:40:05 2026


The high losses sustained on the ground by the Luftwaffe in late 1944-1945 were a result of the loss of air supremacy (and fuel) and were in no way a cause of it. Vinnie
seems to be looking for a "force multiplier factor" to be applied to the entire campaigns on the Western and Eastern fronts. IMHO, that's pointless. The odds were not
constant, but shifted; the Luftwaffe held its own in the West thru 1943, but lost the tactical initiative during Big Week in February, 1944, and never came close to regaining
it. Luftwaffe performance relative to that of the Western Allies got poorer and poorer, owing to both quantitative and qualitative inferiority. The Sturmgruppen and the jets
were very effective against bombers, but the rest of the Luftwaffe could do virtually nothing to protect them (or themselves) from the American escorts.

The loss data really need to be examined on a mission-by-mission rather than a campaign basis (microscopic RT macroscopic analysis). The following table will give you a
rough idea (don't flame me on the exact numbers; I'm writing this at work and lack references). I'll list the losses for five major US 8th AF missions. Losses of fighters (8th
AF and Reichsluftverteidigung [RLV]) are total losses sustained in aerial combat. US bomber losses are given as destroyed-Cat E-damaged. Losses to fighters can't be
separated from those to flak, but flak became ever more important as the war went on, as can be seen from the damage numbers; most "returned damaged" bombers had
been hit by flak.

US bombers US fighters RLV fighters
17 Aug 43 60-4-168 3 40
14 Oct 43 60-7-138 1 38
06 Mar 44 69-6-347 11 46
12 May 44 46-9-412 10 69
26 Nov 44 34-8-299 9 98

For data on later missions (things got even worse for the Luftwaffe) I recommend the books of the late Werner Girbig.

HTH and Horrido (and I hope the table lines up!)

Don

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Vinnie O
National Effectiveness factor
Tue Mar 6 21:52:10 2026


The number I'm actually looking for is the percentage by which 100 German fighter pilots are better (i.e., objectively more productive) than US-RAF or VVS pilots.

Dupuy has established a figure of 1.26 for German ground forces. I'm looking for a similar number amongst air folks (that is, if both sides fly P-51Ds, 100 German pilots
would trade EVEN with 126 Allied pilots over a statistically significant number of days of combat). I don't believe that the number is 1.0, which has always been the
argument pushed by the USAF.

The number for Germans against Russian ground forces is well over 2.0, and may be well over 3.0 (300 VVS pilots against 100 German pilots, both in identical machines). I
need to separate Western losses from Eastern losses in order to have numbers of German losses to compare with Krivosheev's numbers.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Don Caldwell
It's not remarkable at all....
Tue Mar 6 16:10:22 2026


....but you need to make sure that your two sources were working from the same primary sources, and define "combat loss" the same -- you want losses in the air, not on
the ground, and true combat losses, and not total losses on operations, which could be double the combat losses on days with bad weather. The Western Allies definitely
gained "air supremacy" over German skies in the second quarter of 1944. No reputable source that I know of disagrees with this conclusion. Jagdwaffe losses shot up, not
only over the Reich, but on the Invasionsfront after D-Day. To see what this meant to a single Jagdgeschwader, look at the graph of personnel losses on the JG 26 website.
These are pilot losses only, which eliminates any questions about "damaged" or "ground losses", but unfortunately include all casualties, both on and off ops, and not just
combat losses. But you take what you can get.

HTH and Horrido!

Don Caldwell

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Vinnie O
nice to hear from a pro
Tue Mar 6 21:39:04 2026


Thank you very much for your kind attention.

I intend shortly to pull the JG 26 books and see what they say about the period (and the period prior to May, 1940).

I was generally hoping that someone else was already familiar with Murray's work, and could tell me which statistics he picked. Murray generally gives a table of "losses"
(broken between Combat and Non-Combat) and "damage". He then gives a series of tables that appear to list combat and non-combat losses by "half-years" from May,
1940, through June, 1944.

John Ellis gives numbers for combined losses (all causes) and damaged (all causes, down to 10%) for 1 September, 1939, through December, 1944. He adds to this a
number for combat losses in 1945.

It is VERY likely that this is apples and oranges.

Since I'm looking for a TYPICAL exchange rate for 100 Allied aircraft fighting 100 German aircraft for 30 days (or something), I believe that the period of interests is in fact
OVER by the Summer of 1944 and what happened from D-Day to the Surrender was something no longer representative of the air forces. (Unfortunately for our Russian
friends, this is probably exactly the period where the VVS demonstrated their BEST results.) I'm sure I can do this from the information in your books for JG 26, but I'm
hoping to establish a ratio for say Dieppe, and then confirm it as being GENERALLY true using broader statistics.

I very much enjoyed the analysis at your webpage. I can almost get my ratios from only that information, since I'm looking for a German:Russian ratio and an
German:RAF-USAAF ratio. I guess I also need a German:RAF bomber ratio (night combat) and German:USAAF ration (day combat).

But then why did God invent spreadsheets if He didn't intend for us to pour data into them.

Vince O'Mahony

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Don Caldwell
Why did God invent spreadsheets?
Wed Mar 7 00:30:08 2026


To keep engineers away from the real world, and thus out of trouble. Yes, the statistics of Murray and the other guy are obviously apples and oranges. But what Dupuy did
and what you are attempting are watermelons and wallaroos. Dupuy had ample data for comparable units, infantry batallions. But you're trying to lump together the most
individualistic combatants of the war, fighter pilots, and do statistics on campaigns that saw macro-scale changes from month to month, and varied in its particulars in each
individual engagement.

You can get your National Effectiveness Factor for JG 26 on the Kanalfront in 1941-1942 from the data in my book. IIRC, it'll be about 3-4. But a GENERAL factor for the
West? No way. The factor was dropping by the end of 1942, as the last of the Spitfire Vs were phased out. The Jagdwaffe did well against the first P-47s, owing to
American inexperience and poor tactics. But the Amercans kept coming, and coming, and learning....

The subject is way too complicated for these brief communications. I'll include my fully-developed thoughts on the subject in the RLV book Rich Muller and I are working on
(ETA: 2026!) But large-scale mano-a-mano engagements between 8th AF fighters and the Jagdwaffe took place very rarely during the period in which you say the latter
force peaked. On most missions the German units were specifically ordered to stay away from the American escorts. Of course, this affected their morale and ultimately
their effectiveness. The Americans were able to bounce them as they attempted to attack the bombers -- not a fair test of their fighter-vs-fighter prowess. Look at how few
fighters the US lost on the missions I tabulated!

Horrido!

Don

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Vinnie O
I make a living comparing apple and oranges
Wed Mar 7 02:49:26 2026


I've been a contractor to DoD for more than 20 years, and so comparing watermelons and swamp gas is simply something I do ever day. (Since I have a BA, I take any
suggestion that I'm an "engineer" as a most HORRIBLE insult.)

For the ground units, tank battles are generally fought one on one, and they occur RARELY. Even infantry battles are fought rather one on one, and there are odd facts like
30% of all soldiers who see an enemy decline to fire their weapons (for a whole bunch of REASONS, but the NET effect is the same). But the Army regularly produces
gross numbers for expected losses per 1,000 troops per day of combat (even lists how many Silver Stars to order in advance of a major operation). The G-1 is in fact
supposed to ordering replacements IN ADVANCE of the losses as part of his routine job. Dupuy simply attempted to quantify the DIFFERENCE between combat forces of
different nationalities, and discovered that it explained A LOT about why attacks failed. (I was taught by a neighbor, while still in grade school, that a Norwegian can beat
any 10 Swedes, but I think this requires a few more facts to be conclusive ...)

For any system there are trends and gross features. If the Allies have 1,000 day bombers, how many day fighters do the Allies need to field to inflict loss rates high enough
that the crews mutiny (as they did after Scheinfurt) or the commanders call off the attacks as pointless (as the Germans did against England after 1942 or so)?

If an air staff can't answer a question like that then they are worthless. To simply say that one needs "more" is to admit that you don't understand the problem well enough
to manage it. Buying more airplanes is a thing to be traded off against other options offered by the other Services.

There are 2 ways to do this analysis: top-down and bottom-up. I'm starting with top down, because it's the best way to bound the problem. At some point I'll throw in some
bottom-up data to confirm that the top-down is generally moving in the right direction. Inventing solutions out of thin air is why project managers keeping paying us to
prepare their budget pitches.

The only real alternative to defining and analyzing the question is an ENDLESS series of personal opinions where one freak event, in a widely read book, is allowed to
outweigh all of the rest of the evidence. (I'm sure our Russian friends are never going to accept a 3:1 INHERENT superiority for the Germans, regardless of how the numbers
come out.)

But I look forward to any of your new books. 20 years ago it was widely accepted that this information was lost forever and that "Luftwaffe War Diaries" was the best source
for German air operations. The level of scholarship that has become standard in the last 10 years simply astounds me: HUNDREDS of references listed in the bibliography,
not just dozens. Great stuff, simply great.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Artie Bob
Evaluations
Wed Mar 7 18:25:36 2026


My credentials are an MA in History, but also a BS in physics; I was a registered PEME and I started flying over 50 years ago. I also in the far distant past did DOD
(USAF)contract studies and simulations. GIGO and unless you have a good understanding of both the constraints of your modeling and the nature of the situations you are
dealing with, still GO, even if you started with quality input. Having at times read a number of DOD studies and reports, most of them were flawed by the absence of one or
more of the above required conditions to produce a useful tool for understanding and analysing various situations.
As far as the availability of information, in the USA, it has pretty well availble all the time, at least the last 50 years, which is the period I have been chasing it. I still am
finding new (to me) information in material that has supposedly been "mined" by serious researchers. IMHO, there has been no general publication to date that presents an
accurate overall picture of the Luftwaffe in a numeric or statistical sense. This is based on first hand evaluation of over 100,000 pages of Luftwaffe documents available in the
USA. The picture has improved over the past 10 years in the sense that a number of good quality books have been published, most focusing on limited subject areas.
Eventually enough quality items will be available that by reading a hundred or so volumes, one will have a pretty good sense of what happened. but that time is not here yet
nor has anybody yet done anything like a definitive work on the Luftwaffe, which will be a real task, given the breadth and complexity of the subject.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Dick Powers
Losses
Tue Mar 6 16:55:50 2026


The question of LW losses over the period in question is an interesting one. Taking your loss figures of 16,500 over nine months (approximately 270 days), this equates to
an average of 60 losses per day. Assuming it’s not just the Jagdwaffe, but also includes bombers, transport, ground attack aircraft (not pilots) this doesn’t seem all that
unreasonable. (Remember that Bodenplatte aircraft losses on one day were about 300 aircraft – from Gerbig “Six Moths to Oblivion” - and that is only the western fromt.
Other losses from the eastern front must be added for the day's total losses)

Remember that after the Battle of Britain, and until the Russian invasion, the LW was not heavily engaged. Even in North Africa, the actual numbers of aircraft committed
were relatively small. And on the channel front, JG 26 and JG 2 were alone in resisting the RAF/USAAC. In Russia, a major commitment, but losses were probably not
excessive. So in the mid-war years losses may have been relatively light.

Things changed in 1944. Beginning with “Big Week” the western allies made the Luftwaffe their primary target (Operation Pointblank). Not just aircraft factories, but
everything that could fly. The 8th AF fighter command went on the offensive, no longer defensively protecting the bombers, but offensively attacking the LW anywhere they
found them.

The Italian campaign, surprisingly, wasn’t a big factor in LW losses. “Air War Over Italy” gives Allied estimates of total LW losses at about 5,600 destroyed, while post-war
General Koller wrote that the actual losses for all of 1944 in Italy were about 1,000.

The big factor in the increased losses in the west was the invasion of Normandy. The 8th AF, 9th AF and the 2nd Tactical Air Force continually attacked the LW where
they could find them. On the eastern front, Soviet offenses beginning about the same time also would seem to have caused considerable losses, although I don’t have a
feel for the magnitude of these losses.

Of course at this time replacement pilot training quality decreased significantly, many of the new pilots not surviving their first 5 sorties.

So does it seem surprising that 40% of the LW losses occurred in after June 1944? Surprising, yes, but also believable.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Artie Bob
Luftwaffe Losses
Tue Mar 6 17:28:46 2026


My suggestion, quite serious, is that if you really want to understand what happened to the Luftwaffe concerning losses, is buy or borrow a set of the QM loss lists and
start poring through them. Don’t take someone’s second or third hand evaluation. It really depends on how important it is to know what was happening. There is so much
information that you really don’t realize is there until you start studying and analyzing the records. How the types of losses change, what a/c type and subtypes, locations.
As you put the individual names and places together, you will gain a depth of understanding that reading others often time superficial and poorly researched or even better
begin to develop judgement that helps you recognize the really good stuff. Even though there are missing parts, there is enough there to keep you busy for a long time. I
currently don’t have access to some of the operation unit material, but the non-operational film, that came from the BA only cost about 30 dollars, less than most good
books. I go to the local library and use their reader.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Dick Powers
BA Lists
Tue Mar 6 19:38:53 2026


How does one get copies of these records?

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Vinnie O
Hoped somebody had done all my work
Wed Mar 7 02:16:22 2026


I live just outside Washington, DC, and I've been putting off buying reels of microfilm from the National Archives, but I think you're probably right: I need to see the raw data
at some point.

I've seen snips of analysis done from microfilm records of German ground units. The wealth of detail available about unit equipment and training levels on practically a daily
headcount basis is fantastic.

It also appears that the available Allied records are actually more questionable than the German numbers. This is because there seems to be some serious question about
the USAAF, for example, not including non-combat losses in their normally reported totals. And for both the RAF and USAAF there is the problem that the widely quoted
numbers are for a PORTION of the total air fleet (e.g., RAF Bomber Command, US 8th AF). I have NEVER seen a number, for example, of USAAF losses of
TRANSPORTS between January, 1942, and September, 1945. And if non-combat losses were running higher than combat, we may have lost 3-4,000 transports ... And
then there is the problem that SOME of the US losses in the West were US Navy losses.

But I was hoping that someone had alread done most of the work and I could just borrow a book from the library.

Williamson Murray's book appears to be solidly researched. He even gives some indication for selected periods as to where the losses occurred (West, East, Med).

If there is no better source that is readily available (and pre-digested), then I think I'm finished looking for Luftwaffe numbers and only have to worry about RAF and USAAF
(and of course the French, and then guess as to how many Med aircraft were destroyed by the Italians ...)

[Richard T Eger]

Jim Lankford wrote to me on 19 Apr. 2026 with comments regarding use of Dupuy's methods:

"During my most recent visit I noticed one message which referred to the writer using Dupuy's numeric ratio describing the relative combat effectiveness of American and German soldiers. At the time my intent was to warn the writer against using Dupuy's work as a basis for comparing soldiers, pilots, or any other individual combatants. However, I was not feeling well and abandoned the attempt after a short time.

Dupuy's numeric ratio for relative combat effectiveness has been successfully refuted by historians in recent years. Most notably is the growing body of evidence which essentially destroys the myth of the superiority of the German combat soldier. It is becoming increasingly clear that on average the veteran American GI was at least as good as the veteran German GI. The same, I think must apply to pilots.

The myths of WWII are many and varied. They have all to often developed a life of their own. For example, American soldiers did not in reality enjoy an overwhelming superiority of critical combat supplies and equipment. The idea that the US won the war in Europe by simply outproducing the enemy is simply not true.

Well, I won't go on."

Regards,
Richard